"The Whole Classroom Left Behind," starts out as a humorous memoir about the experiences of an older man in a modern, inner-city, failing American school. Because of the vast gap in attitudes and thinking between him and his hip-hop loving charges, dozens of totally hilarious incidents and misunderstandings occur and the book provides a laugh a minute! Then though, as the book goes on, Shine begins to dig much deeper to explore the roots of the epidemic discipline problems and wild misbehavior that he's been encountering and he begins an exploration of just what EXACTLY is going wrong in our modern inner city schools. Mr. Shine gives us the benefit of his extensive research as to what the problems are with public school education (especially what's happening in our crumbling inner cities) and what, precisely, can be done to improve the outcomes for our kids in general and, more importantly, what you can do for YOUR CHILD in particular. Throughout the book, Common Sense and "out of the box" solutions to the problems in our failing schools are presented and although the educational establishment is certainly GOING TO HATE it, concerned inner city parents and educational reformers are going to find some very useful tools here, and quite valid arguments, to begin repairing America's seriously flawed public school educational system! You may not agree with EVERYTHING that Mr. Shine has to say, but if ever there was a book that can get the discussion going about what's wrong with our schools- THIS IS IT!